The final arc, introduced in the final hour, is the high point: It involves a wagon train making its way with an unlikely cast of characters through the Montana territory. Luke Wilson, the head of this traveling group, is the strongest actor in this cast, too. He is more than a shadow of a Western archetype, imbuing Matthew Van Weyden with a groundedness that the series sorely lacks.
Because as much as Costner tries to play an even hand, attempting to give the Indigenous and settler perspective equal attention, it doesn’t wholly work. Yes, we meet the family of the Apache warriors, but their screen time pales in comparison to their white counterparts. It also doesn’t help that the white women characters are, for the most part, so clean and luminous—nary a speck of dust on them despite their grungy surroundings—that they appear angelic on screen. The score is equally telling: It’s a gorgeous, big, triumphant Old Hollywood score whose most sympathetic notes are reserved for the film’s white characters. Costner does at least include a diverse cast, nodding toward the presence of Black people and Chinese immigrants in the history of the West, tracing across the vast, sumptuously photographed landscape by DP J. Michael Muro.
While “Horizon” teases a kind of conspiracy theory—a mysterious publisher is printing and sending pamphlets promising a land of milk of honey that is only occupied by death—I can’t help but continue to think about the film in relation to “How The West Was Won.” That Western, ultimately, couldn’t overcome the weight of the era it was created in or genre conventions like forced, feeble romances. “Horizon” is arriving in a more “enlightened” time, especially considering the release of Martin Scorsese’s “Killer of the Flower Moon” and other Indigenous-made works, such as “Reservation Dogs,” “Wild Indian,” “The Body Remembers When the World Broken Open,” “Beans,” and more. That presence put even greater pressure on Costner. And so far, he hasn’t completely overcome being the director of “Dances with Wolves.” That filmmaker, for better or for worse, still exists here in every corner of this epic picture.
While the first film in the possible “Horizon” series does well in setting up future pictures, continuing the momentum Costner gained before he left “Yellowstone,” this single film is a chore to sit through. It rarely gives viewers what they want: seeing Costner on the open range. It gives us few memorable characters outside of Costner: I can’t remember the name of a single figure without looking at my notes. It feels like a debilitating mistake to bank on possible future films to land the entire concept. “Horizon” keeps far too many of the best bits far out of reach.
This review was filed from the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. It opens on June 28th.